


tired and waiting for the sunlight (when it comes, it's still dark where I'm going)

by starknight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Rewrite, F/M, First Kiss, Fix-It, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Kylo Ren Doesn't Die, Late Night Writing, Movie: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Redeemed Ben Solo, Spoilers, The Rise of Skywalker spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 11:01:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21848611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starknight/pseuds/starknight
Summary: “Do you think,” Ben started, voice shaking, “that I could be - both?”“Both of what?”“Sorry, and - in love with you.”
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey
Comments: 13
Kudos: 200
Collections: TROS Reylo Fix-it Fics





	tired and waiting for the sunlight (when it comes, it's still dark where I'm going)

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for The Rise of Skywalker! 
> 
> Also, fixing Reylo up, because we deserve so much better. If you're here to yell about the morality of it, please don't, I just wanna enjoy my ship :) I wrote this straight after watching the midnight premiere and now it's 4.30am and I have work oh dear -
> 
> Hope you all enjoy, comment if you want more and I might just get around to writing it <3

Kylo should have died when he fell. No two ways about it.

Instead, he clawed his way up the side of the stone, the shreds of the Force-bond urging him to keep going. Keep fighting. _Rise up._

Kylo shouldn’t have made it to the top. He shouldn’t have been able to climb an inch, not in his state.

But Rey needed him. She was desperately weakened, and she was lying on the cold stone floor, and _she needed him._

Kylo almost fell over when he finally stood up. He should have fallen over. But he walked, unsteady and lurching, and upright. Step by step by stumbling step he made it to Rey’s side. He had almost forgotten how to hold someone you loved. It was awkward. Clumsy. But then he had her in his arms, and she was cold, so cold.

She was draining away. It was like a faint whirlpool in the Force around them, focussing all energy on Rey. Her hands, icy in his.

Kylo took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He had seen her do this exact thing, had felt the energies eddying around her as she did, surely, _surely,_ he could do it for her, just this one thing, this one, last, tiny huge thing - 

Her hand was still cold, but it gripped his. She sputtered awake with all the grace of a Zephyr speeder engine stalling in first gear, her breaths coming in chokes and gags, her face screwing up and contracting in pulses. Fuck, but he loved her.

Then her hands were on his face, and she was smiling - such a brilliant, radiant smile. Her eyes were twin suns, and they kindled something in him that had been there all along. She stroked his cheek with her thumb, and the blaze grew. Each point of touch was alight, and moved the earth around them - or was it them moving? She touched and he touched, and the bond, their bond, the sacred part of Kylo and Rey that could never truly be taken, began to reform. It was slow at first, and they had to work at it, each breathing deep, managing the Force flow between them. 

The trickle of Force became a stream. 

Kylo closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against Rey’s, and the stream became a river. 

He felt her breath on his lips before they touched, and then he opened, both his mouth to her and his soul to the Force. He became a conduit. Rey gasped into him, and he kissed her back properly. The bond snapped fully back into place with an electric shock that was half pain and half pleasure, and they both jumped, bashing foreheads.

“Sorry,” said Rey, rubbing her head, but grinning from ear to ear.

Ben Skywalker-Solo blinked at her, and tried out a smile. It was a good idea, because Rey’s eyes shone ever-brighter, and it was a terrible idea, because he could feel all of the love she inspired being communicated through the bond.

Rey’s smile faded, and she grew more serious. Intense. Ben knew that look, and he had only ever seen it illuminated in the blue of her saber. Now, it flashed green and red from the overhead fire. And it was directed at him.

“Um,” he said, but it was less of a _said_ and more of a _choked_ . Ben had never been good at talking about his feelings - and that was _before_ he’d joined the order famed for blocking out all feeling.

“I love you,” Rey said fiercely, and kissed him again. She said it again, and again, _I love you, I love you, Ben,_ in between kisses.

“I -” he tried, and got muffled by her lips. She pulled back, and laughed. 

“Sorry,” she said again.

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” said Ben automatically. “It’s - it’s me. I’m the one who’s sorry.”

The skin around her eyes developed faint lines as she squinted at him. He waited for her to think, keeping his hand on her shoulder, the warmth spreading right down to his bruised and battered toes.

“Yes,” she said slowly. “I think you should be. Sorry, that is.”

Ben nodded, but didn’t bow his head just yet. He would let himself cry in a moment. He would get on his knees, on his belly, and crawl for as long as it would take, but - just a moment.

“Do you think,” he started, voice shaking, “that I could be - both?”

“Both of what?”

“Sorry, and - in love with you.”

Rey’s expression softened, and she pushed a stray strand of hair behind his ear. “Well, I don’t know. Are you?”

Ben breathed in, and out, and in, and out, and nodded.

“Can you say it?” she whispered, her eyes searching his. “Please?”

“I love you,” he whispered back. Their Force-bond became less of a bond and more of a completely irresistible magnetic force. Ben found himself pressed to Rey, her chin on his shoulder, his cheek against hers. 

“I love you,” she echoed, and he could hear, could _feel_ the smile in it. It made him smile, too.

“I love you,” they said again at the same time. Ben huffed in amusement, and Rey giggled into his shoulder. Their bond resonated and hummed happily, feeding joy to joy, love to love.

Ben didn’t know how long they stayed like that for. It could have been seconds, or minutes, or hours. It felt like the same length of time as a photograph; a moment stretched to be impossibly infinite.

And then Rey asked, _What now?,_ and Ben had absolutely no idea.

There was just one last thing to do. One last errand to run. Wasn’t that just the nature of things? Rey had never, in all her life, finished all the work she meant to do. She suspected she never would - and rather liked it that way.

The suns of Tattooine were blinding in their twin red scorch. Rey held up one hand to guard against the glare. She might have held up both, but one was otherwise occupied.

Ben’s hand was warm. It was gentle. It was, most importantly, holding her own.

As they approached the little brick dome, Rey was struck by the size, or rather, the lack of it. The name _Luke Skywalker_ had been uttered with such awe to take the place of legend. Most people on Jakku didn’t believe he ever existed. Rey distantly remembered overhearing another scavenger saying the Skywalkers were a metaphor. For what, exactly, the scavenger hadn’t specified. The point was - Master Luke ought to have come from some sort of grand beginning. At the very least, she thought it would have been a well-off farm, not this - this little hole in the ground that had clearly seen better days.

Ben’s expression mirrored hers. She looked at him from force of habit, used to reading people visually, but the Force gave her a much clearer and more detailed reading of him. There was a humility there, a faint embarrassment. 

“What is it?” she asked, though she thought she already knew.

He shrugged. “I always assumed my family were comfortable, the same way I was. It’s only now I realize what my - my dad was trying to tell me. When he said n-not everyone was as l-lucky.”

Rey dropped his hand, and slid her arm around his waist instead, leaning her head on his shoulder. He sniffed, and looked down. Gratitude flowed around her.

“Let’s get this over with,” she said, pulling out the lightsabers. “One each?”

Ben nodded, and took Leia’s. She felt him shiver with the echo, and a short flash of grief passed through her as the memories hit. She let the memories of Luke’s saber touch her, too, one last time. Then they laid them on the ground. 

Ben held out his hand, and Rey, beaming, took it. Without needing to exchange words, they used the Force from their other hands to bury the sabers. When they were a good few metres underground, they stopped. And looked at each other.

“What now?” Ben asked. He sounded more than a little lost. Rey squeezed his hand. 

“Oh, I don’t know. Run the galaxy? Rebuild the Jedi Order? Get married and have tons of kids?” She was expecting a good shock with that last one, but -

“You want kids?” Ben asked, watching her closely. Fuck. Trust her to make this weird already.

“Um,” she said. “Can we - you know - give it a few years? Just to make sure there’s not, like, a Final Final Order.”

“Or a _This-One-Is-The-Final-Order-We-Promise,”_ Ben smiled.

Rey laughed. “No, _this_ one is the final one. The last last last last final order.”

“They’d have to start numbering them,” Ben mused. “How many sort of - you know - Empire thingies have there been, exactly?”

Rey frowned. “Depends on how you count them.”

“Well, we could develop a - a system for them. The Really Bad ones, they get to be numbers, and the Well, That Was Easy ones can just be A, and B. And so on.”

They walked back to their ship in the dying light of the twin suns. As they entered, Rey stopped to watch as the light dipped below the horizon.

 _Gone for now,_ she thought, _but always ready to start again._

Tomorrow was a new day, a new chance, and a new life. And they would face it as they would face all the rest: together, hand-in-hand.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @ gay-star-knight


End file.
